Top 1200 Quotes & Sayings by Famous Novelists - Page 2

Writing used to be my hobby, but now that it's my job, I have no hobby - except watching TV and laying around the pool reading 'U.S. Weekly.' I have tried many hobbies, such as knitting, Pilates, ballet, yoga, and guitar, but none of them have taken.

Mistakes are the portals of discovery.

Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try Again. Fail again. Fail better.

Mystery is at the heart of creativity. That, and surprise.

One of the truest tests of integrity is its blunt refusal to be compromised.

Down to Gehenna, or up to the Throne, He travels the fastest who travels alone.

Failure is the condiment that gives success its flavor.

The art of writing is the art of discovering what you believe.

O, what a tangled web we weave when first we practise to deceive!

Time flies over us, but leaves its shadow behind.

Barcelona is a very old city in which you can feel the weight of history; it is haunted by history. You cannot walk around it without perceiving it.

A good laugh is sunshine in the house.

I look back on my 20s. It's supposed to be the prime of your life, the most vital, the most beautiful. But you're making your critical decisions and sometimes your most critical mistakes.

Being a woman is a terribly difficult task, since it consists principally in dealing with men.

Loneliness is the poverty of self; solitude is the richness of self.

There is always one moment in childhood when the door opens and lets the future in.

Every villain needs her story told.

The truth does not change according to our ability to stomach it.

If the human condition were the periodic table, maybe love would be hydrogen at No. 1. Death would be helium at No. 2. Power, I reckon, would be where oxygen is.

You can't state difference and also state equality. We have to state sameness to understand equality.

Love is like any other luxury. You have no right to it unless you can afford it.

I think growing up is difficult and it's a process that I'm always interested in, with kids and adults, they are often on two different universes.

Well, I think that part of being young is not exactly knowing why you do some of the things that you do. And it's by exploring your life or experimenting or making mistakes and learning from them hopefully that you start to forge an identity.

If it seems a childish thing to do, do it in remembrance that you are a child.

When you grow up in a place, you always think it's mundane. Then you travel around and live in different places, and you realise that you've got it the wrong way 'round.

Do not mind anything that anyone tells you about anyone else. Judge everyone and everything for yourself.

There are two ways of spreading light: to be the candle or the mirror that reflects it.

The highest prize in a world of men is the most beautiful woman available on your arm and living there in her heart loyal to you.

God gave us memory so that we might have roses in December.

Home is, in the end, not just the place where you sleep, but the place where you stand.

I am happy being what I am.

Bullets cannot be recalled. They cannot be uninvented. But they can be taken out of the gun.

I never grew up thinking the goal in life was to be a millionaire. All the way through college, I had a part-time job. I worked hard to get the things that you need at that age.

Waiting for the spark from heaven to fall.

Life is short, and we should respect every moment of it.

I have a good memory for early life. My visual memory is good about childhood and adolescence, and less good in the last 10 years. I could probably tell you less what happened in the last 10 years. I remember what houses looked like, sometimes they just pop into my head.

You always feel like your 18-year-old self in some sense. And that's what walking through New York on a June evening feels like - you feel like it's Friday, and you're 17 years old.

Extraordinary people survive under the most terrible circumstances and they become more extraordinary because of it.

Empathy is about finding echoes of another person in yourself.

I remember when I was a child... walking into the woods by myself and feeling the solitude around me build like electricity and pass through my body with a jolt that made my hair prickle.

I learned you have to move fast, writing futuristic satire in America: Before you know it, you're a realist!

She gave me a smile I could feel in my hip pocket.

We all know the Indians were colonized by the Europeans, but every colonized Indian has been colonized by the Indian reaction to colonization.

True intelligence requires fabulous imagination.

The story of 'Mirror Mirror' is in many ways a story about evolution. It's about the evolution of a child into an adult. It's about the evolution of those dwarves into something a little less rock-like, a little more humanoid. It's about the evolution of history, too, from the darkness of the Middle Ages into the light of the Age of Reason.

The man dies in all who keep silent in the face of tyranny.

The secret of joy in work is contained in one word - excellence. To know how to do something well is to enjoy it.

Those who created this country chose freedom. With all of its dangers. And do you know the riskiest part of that choice they made? They actually believed that we could be trusted to make up our own minds in the whirl of differing ideas. That we could be trusted to remain free, even when there were very, very seductive voices - taking advantage of our freedom of speech - who were trying to turn this country into the kind of place where the government could tell you what you can and cannot do.

Respect for ourselves guides our morals, respect for others guides our manners.

Since the day of my birth, my death began its walk. It is walking toward me, without hurrying.

No object is mysterious. The mystery is your eye.

People live with the illusion that we have a democratic system, but it's only the outward form of one. In reality we live in a plutocracy, a government of the rich.

Many receive advice, only the wise profit from it.

Nothing is definite, nothing is finished, nothing is determined.

Put two ships in the open sea, without wind or tide, and, at last, they will come together. Throw two planets into space, and they will fall one on the other. Place two enemies in the midst of a crowd, and they will inevitably meet; it is a fatality, a question of time; that is all.

Old age isn't a battle; old age is a massacre.

I describe not men, but manners; not an individual, but a species.

The happiest moment of my life was probably when my daughter was born.

A little nonsense now and then is relished by the wisest men.

A wise man fights to win, but he is twice a fool who has no plan for possible defeat.